[Web4lib] RE: vendors and usability

[Joshua Ferraro]

On Mon, Jul 18, 2005 at 01:38:36PM -0700, David Walker wrote:
> Unless, of course, Koha 3.0 will provide that.  In which case I will be
> happy to eat my words and up the timeline to conversion. ;-)
:-). Koha 3.0 and as far back as 1.0 has a terminal interface 
(on the librarian side). We're investigating options for web-based 
clients that are based on DHTML (XMLHttp for instance) to lower the HTML
overhead and increase the usability of the interface. That's the
direction that the PINES Evergreen project has taken (the other
large player in the open-source ILS world) and the results there 
are quite impressive.

But to be honest, Koha now is more usable than many of the proprietary 
systems out there. Everything you need to do is neatly layed out on a 
resident navigational bar and short-cut keys control all actions so a 
staff member rarely needs to use a mouse.

You can try out the circ functions here:
http://koha.liblime.com

But you're right that Koha 3.0's interface will be much better.
The thing is, Koha 3.0 will include a lot of great features only 
because libraries who have vision are sponsoring them. I can't
tell you how many libraries have said 'well if Koha did X we could
use it'. Koha could easily do X ... but someone needs to step
forward and sponsor it before it's going to happen. None of the
libraries who have have turned back ... it's kinda like switching from
IE to Firefox ... how many proprietary vendors can say that? :-)

Cheers,
-- 
Joshua Ferraro               VENDOR SERVICES FOR OPEN-SOURCE SOFTWARE
President, Technology       migration, training, maintenance, support
LibLime                                Featuring Koha Open-Source ILS
jmf at liblime.com |Full Demos at http://liblime.com/koha |1(888)KohaILS